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Politicizing abortion a profoundly stupid idea

With Rick Santorum somehow surging in the polls, this election cycle has become strangely about social issues, sidelining more pressing topics, such as the economy and the environment. However, it goes beyond simply those running for the Republican leadership nomination: yes, stupidity runs deep in the elephant party.

I didn't realize people were that stupid, and politicians too, no less. These people are stupid enough to think that they can dictate what women can and cannot do to their bodies medically, physically and sexually.

While Mississippi voters mercifully rejected the “personhood” initiative, (which would have banned abortion under any circumstances as well as any forms of birth control), this has not stopped the rash of archaic, sexually condemning actions that have overwhelmed the American political discourse.

The state of Virginia has now made it compulsory for women seeking an abortion to undergo a trans-abdominal ultrasound. And the women have to pay for it, too.

Newsflash: women already know what is growing inside of them – forcing them to come face-to-face with the image of this is not going to change anything. For a party which claims to be about privacy, respect and safety, making a woman undergo a procedure that most do not even want, seems astonishingly stupid.

And speaking of stupid, Republican Darrell Issa’s “committee” on birth control and the health of women made intelligent folk look up from their test tubes and large hadron colliders. Message to Mr. Issa - you can’t call it a committee on birth control and women’s health if you don’t invite a single woman to participate.

Thomas Beattie aside, men have no idea what it’s like to get pregnant, or have a yeast infection, or get pre-eclampsia, or a host of other infections that can befall women. This is not the 15th century.

Let's skip further through the Southern US of A, shall we? The great state of Georgia, home of Jimmy Carter, Ty Cobb, and peaches, has now put forth a bill banning men from having vasectomies. Proposed by democratic Representative Yasmin Neal, in an effort to exhibit the hypocrisy of anti-abortion based restrictions to women's health, this bill is in keeping with the similar "Every Sperm is Sacred" amendment proposed by Oklahoma state Senator Constance Johnson.

“If we legislate women’s bodies, it’s only fair that we legislate men’s," justified Neal. Believing that vasectomies leave “thousands of children ... deprived of birth," the bill is tongue-in-cheek, though it wouldn’t even need to exist if stupidity wasn’t already rampant in the Georgia legislature.

"It is patently unfair that men avoid the rewards of unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly," the Georgian bill sarcastically reads, "... It is the purpose of the General Assembly to assert an invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men in this state and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men."

For a country that claims to be "post-feminism", forcing women to go through with a pregnancy they may not want doesn't seem to be a prime example of gender equality in action.

Pregnancy is not a right. Being able to make decisions that best effect our bodies is. For the record, I don’t believe that being stupid is a right. It is also a choice. I am surprised that so many lawmakers would choose this option and do so in such a public way. Perhaps there ought to be a law legislating that those who run for office have to have an IQ in the positives.

If the Republicans are so bent on legislating what women can and cannot do with their bodies, then I want a law banning douchebags from politics.

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